The potential number of eggs consumed over the spawning
season was also directly related to sculpin size. The largest
sculpins of both species could consume over 80 fresh eggs, and
up to 135, over a 7-day period. While we do not know how
many eggs individual sculpins are consuming over the course
of the spawning run, we suspect for a number of reasons that
they are feeding to near satiation. First, we often noted that
sculpins were bloated with eggs during our surveys. Second,
their high motivation to feed on eggs was apparent in our feeding
studies, where they readily fed on eggs in unnatural conditions
and in broad daylight. Sculpins are typically thought to
be nocturnal (e.g., Selgeby 1988), but we observed that they
were active on the beaches throughout the day. Third, the
marked decline in the number of sculpins captured in eggbaited
traps coincident with the marked increase in the condition
of sculpins after spawning commenced (Figs. 3 and 7)
suggests that sculpins are finding plenty of eggs to consume
outside the traps